


Fathers in Arms

by blessende



Category: Saga (Comics)
Genre: Bonding, Friendship, Other, Parenthood, Post Volume 6 Spoilers, Trans Character, Volume 9 echoes, fathers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 06:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16057256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessende/pseuds/blessende
Summary: Wearing your heart on your screen has its disadvantages. The doubts of parenthood niggle away at Prince Robot IV until he begins to seek those long elusive answers from his company of fiends.





	Fathers in Arms

 

 

 

Fathers in Arms

 

 

Before his son was born or even conceived, IV used to find the princess nestled in her royal quarters, sitting in an alcove and reading the book ‘What to Expect’. He’d forgotten how many times he had to pry her away from it. “Stow that away, my love. I shall tell you what to expect,” he’d tell her as he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, tracing the atlas of those bumps before finding the soft underside of her palm while his idle hand would roam through the layers of her gown— rich silk of velvet ruffles and gold filigree— made from the death of thousands of Parahuan silkworms and the unforeseen demise of three slave workers (yes, yes, their families more than adequately compensated, curse the draconian union laws of his lily-livered Coalition Allies). IV would slide his way up her beige calves— kneading, caressing and trying to find some purpose in these rare dalliances with his wife, trying to find sanity outside his god-awful conscription in the military. “Our son will rule all,” he’d tell her loud enough for the servants to hear for he never learnt the commoner’s way of whispering. “Mark my words, sweet. Our son will be a regent _most_ powerful the likes of which the kingdom has never seen. Someone who will dethrone my father, that miserable prick in dire need of a spine and a neck. I would pardon even a dash of regicide if junior’s up to it,” IV would pause here, reflecting. “No, correction. He _must_ be up to it if he is to be our son. Junior should have the balls to slice the necks of his betters. Ah, there you have it, words of yours truly— The Oracle. See, my dear, you don’t need a plebeian book to tell you what to _expect_. We will have a son! And if push comes to shove, we will write his future in blood!” 

The princess would return a conniving smile, and the book would be finally cast aside.

“Don’t be a git, IV,” she’d remark, pulling him up by his elbows. “I would rather be your Queen than a King’s Mother.”

It was like looking into the mouth of a silver pool, to see her screen glowing luminescent with the image of a crown.

He certainly misses that plotting brain of hers, her smiles of conspiracy, her visions of multicolored propaganda and oh, that sinister mouth of intrigue and xenophobia. IV’s grown up being surrounded by intrigue— courtiers and their wiles, his manipulative father, secret service agents who had more secrets up their sleeves than any actual ability to render service, intergalactic spies and everything in between. And after all these years of trials and tribulations, here is IV now— his wife dead, the princess rotted to silicon and dust while he's bereft of his title and now living in squalor and in the company of men, women and _others_ who are as straight as a lance. It should make him sick— yes, curse these reprobate pansies and where they've gotten him.

IV's royal tutor once said to him. “It’s not good enough to be _good,_ my prince. You have to be excellent at what you do,” which is just a mouthful of drivel masquerading as some sagely adage, when Prince Robot IV is the prime exhibit of ‘good enough’ or maybe even ‘bad’ or if you want it straight, he is the right amount of ‘evil sonuvabitch’, which is essentially true if you’d been blessed to meet his mother. That one was a harking _bitch_ , alright.

IV sighs and decides he’s had enough of reminiscing the past. These old tales did always leave a sour taste in his mouth.

“Ghϋs,” he calls out to his manservant who isn’t really a man or a servant but pretending to be both.

His call and the sudden abruptness of it startles the herder who’s wearing his jumpsuit. The dwarf seal squawks in surprise, and a strap of his jumpsuit falls off one shoulder, which he rolls back up meekly, embarrassed at how quickly his outfit falls apart at the slightest event.  

“Y-Yes, Sir Robot? You called for Ghϋs?”

IV regards the creature with his usual debonair, one arm to his hip.

“Tell me, Ghϋs. Do you think I'm a good parent?" he pauses, reconsidering his choice of words. "No, wait, am I not the most _excellent_ father to my progeny?”

Of course, Ghϋs, the useless flubber of seal-meat has the audacity to pause and mull over the question. As if he were giving it serious thought. As if his kind were any good at thinking as a matter of principle.

“Well, Sir Robot IV, since you’ve asked for Ghϋs's opinion, I admit you treat your son—”

“I treat my son?” IV trails on a dangerous note.

“Like he’s a soldier from your regiment or worse, a royal subject.”

IV walks up to the creature and stares down at him. His screen projects an image of a man being decapitated.

Ghϋs isn’t fazed and holds his fort. _Somehow._

“He _is_ a soldier, Ghϋs,” IV tells him thickly. “Everyone has to be a soldier to survive this bane of a universe.”

“Sir Robot, your son is eight years old.”

“And an excellent marksman in the making. I treat my son with far more tenderness than my father did for me, I daresay.”

Ghϋs wiggles his button nose and narrows his gaze in challenge. 

“Yet you named him Squire, sir. I think that’s a tad cruel to the lad.”

For a moment, all IV sees is red. The truth sinks and it sears its way through. When he speaks again, his screen is an atomic bomb exploding.

“Curse your impertinent mouth, you flatulent piece of gas. You think you know _anything?_   Out! I say OUT! Out with you! Begone!”

Ghϋs does decide to scoot. He scampers off, grumbling under his breath about how Friendo is a better pal than IV is.

The remark doesn't go unheard. IV picks up a vase and smashes it into the closing door, his rage knowing no bounds.

“I’m not your _friend,_ you imbecile!" he yells. "I am no one's friend. I am a deposed prince in exile, and I will have your head one of these days!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wearing your heart on your screen has its disadvantages.

The doubts of parenting niggle away at him even when he is in bed with Petrichor riding him, squeezing him in all the right spots and doing her voodoo magic thing. Her hermaphrodite body is divine and bountiful, and yet, blunders to beast, all he can think in this moment of ecstasy  is about the princess, shot by Dengo, his son Squire and IV's own inadequacy as a parent.

“IV," Petrichor heaves. "--this would go a lot easier if you didn’t keep showing me pictures of your dead wife,” she tells him.

He snaps from his daze— his daze seeped in shades of sepia and gray scale— and he looks at her deflated. Petrichor. The lovely Petrichor. Beautiful, tall, nimble, a seamstress, spell-caster, seductress, and yes, blessed with dick. God, he loved her dick between those shapely legs.

“Apologies, my love,” he thwacks his head and it begins projecting an image of LOVE! LUST! And a heart thumping vigorously. “There, much better now?”

Petrichor certainly doesn’t find the humor in his attempts to allay her. She rubs her eyes and sighs wearily. She rolls off him, putting a premature end to their nightly session and flops down next to his side. Petrichor wraps a garment around her naked torso and gazes far into the distance, trying to put words to thoughts, trying to derive wisdom from her experience. She seems to make up her mind and turning, places her palms on the sides of his head to look him down.

He likes her aggression, but her words don’t carry it.

“You’re not half as terrible as you think you are, IV," Petrichor tells him. "I wish I could get through that metal head enough to make you believe it.”

He looks up at her, bewildered, his screen showing a collage of confused images-- guns, confetti, question mark-- until finally reflecting her own.

“I’m plagued,” he confides.

“Plagued?” she echoes.

“Yes, plagued by doubts that I’m not a good role model to Squire. I worry immensely that he’ll turn out just like me.”

She studies him expectantly, and there’s a tenderness in her eyes that’s unsettling to IV.

“What’s wrong with being _you_?”

There’s a silence, and he feels the cavity in his chest flood with feelings and emotions he can’t wholly explain.

He settles on gratitude.

“I don’t deserve you, love,” he tells her warmly.

She smirks and leans down to bite his neck.

“You’re right about that, drone,” she whispers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s sitting shirtless before one of those windows that look out into the blackness when he hears footsteps descending the stairwell and IV realizes he isn’t the only father here suffering from PTSD. Marko is up too, raiding the food supplies in search of something to eat.

IV clears his throat and lets his presence known.

“As much as I tolerate this treehouse of yours, some of us can’t live on cabbages forever.”

He never did acquire those whispering talents of the commoners. Marko jerks up in reflex, his head knocking into the bottom of a cabinet— his face grimacing hard from the pain of collision while his hand automatically reaches for a sword that he doesn’t carry. When he sees IV in the offing, his tension eases but his hand remains rigidly attached to that spot on his hip, poised and aching for a weapon that remains loudly absent. IV notices the hand and the ache. God, he's familiar with it too.

“Hmm,” he murmurs to his host. “For a pacifist, you’re awfully quick to draw,” IV remarks astutely.

The moony lets out a curse— mild by IV’s standards for Marko realizes where his hand is and huffs out a harsh breath before making the conscious effort to drop the offensive. When he’s composed himself and his nerves, he throws the former Robot Prince a dirty look.

“Can’t sleep, IV?" Marko snips at him. "I thought your kind is the type that could switch off wherever you are.”

“Har har,” retorts IV and falls into a silence so unbecoming of him. The former prince of the Robot Kingdom turns to the window again, drawn by the void and its stellar emptiness. “I find you and your simpleton humor hilarious, moony. I guess I should expect no less from you or your criminal family. Birds of a fugitive feather flock together. Foolish little cunts, the lot of you. Corkscrewed brains, stubborn, unassailable and I must concede, blighted brave. Even your daughter takes after you.”

Marko looks surprised at this conjecture.

“Uh, thanks?” he offers in reply, and inclines his head thoughtfully, wondering why IV's complimenting him. “— but that’s all Hazel, you know. She raises herself while Alana and I... all we can do is just try.”

Marko turns to the cabinet to pick out a decanter.  

“Try, huh?” IV repeats in wonder. “You say it so easily. I haven’t stopped thinking who Squire takes after. He doesn’t have his mother’s scheming brain nor does he have the gall of the royal family. I question his upbringing and if I’ve failed him as a single father. Squire...He’s much too pussyfooted, self-doubting, hung on ideals of chivalry—” IV pauses and his screen flashes with a picture of a face twisting in agony. “Good god, he's... me.”

Marko rolls his eyes and inclines his head, smiling.

“A better you, actually.”

IV puts a hand across his screen in contempt.

“Child is the father of man, they always said. Oh, bloody hell! Squire takes after _me_ when he could have been so much better. Not just a high definition version of Yours Truly.”

Marko chuckles and sits down next to him, offering him the decanter of kale juice. 

“Like I said,” Marko pipes with optimism. “Children raise themselves. All we can do is—”

“— try, yes, yes, you’re being awfully repetitive, moony,” IV says, transforming his arm into a cup and receiving.

There’s a silence, and the two men turn pensive, sharing their moment of camaraderie but not speaking of it… less the spell broke. They drink their kale juice in silence before IV clears his throat.

“You know,” he says. “— if Hazel and Squire decide to court each other, I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to the arrangement.”

Marko turns to stare at him like he’s swallowed acid, his ears flopping in shock and brows arching sky high.

_"What?”_

IV tilts his monitor head, shrugging.

“Oh, don’t go twisting your horns now. It was merely a _suggestion_ ,” the deposed prince reiterates. “No need to panic.”

Marko returns a scowl and gives the decanter in his hand an angry shake. He shoots down the idea before it can so much as blossom.

“Hazel’s not dating until she’s old,” he vows. 

IV gives his comrade a sidelong glance.

“How old?”

“Like a _gazillion_ years old.”

IV’s smirk is evident in his voice when he speaks.

“You think you’ll be around forever, moony?”

Marko nods, his brown eyes a glimmer.

“Long enough to keep you company, Prince Robot IV.”

 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Brian K. Vaughan, thank you for volume 9.  
> No, not really. :/


End file.
